The present invention relates to an electric guitar, and more particularly relates to an improved coupling construction of a neck with a body of an electric guitar.
In conventional electric guitars, a neck for carrying a head on one end thereof is joined to a body at the other end and strings are stretched between the head and a tail piece provided on the body running over a bridge element also provided on the body. In order that the above-described end junction can satisfactorily bear the large stress caused by the stretched strings, it is necessary to provide the end junction and its related part with a reinforcing construction such as a swell formed on the underside of the end junction. Presence of such a reinforcing construction at the end junction hinders easy access of player's fingers upon the strings in the area of the end junction. Without such a reinforcing construction, the end junction can hardly bear the large stress imposed by the strings.
Further, the acoustical characteristics of the electric guitar are believed to be more or less degraded due to the very constructional feature that the neck holding one end of the strings via the head and the body holding the other ends of the strings via the tail piece and the bridge element are of separate bodies and are joined to each other at the end of the neck.
After a long term study on the relationship between the constructional feature and acoustic characteristics of electric guitars, it was confirmed by the inventor of the present invention that the acoustical characteristics of a guitar are greatly influenced by the mode of the junction between the neck and the body. In other words, it has been found that the junction mode is a very important key factor for obtaining excellent acoustic characteristics. Upon vibration of the strings, the vibration is transmitted via the bridge and tail piece to the body and further to the neck, and the vibrations of these elements are collected by the pickup.
In the case of the conventional guitar in which the neck and body are formed as separate elements and joined to each other at one end of the neck, the vibration of the strings received by the body cannot be sufficiently transmitted to the neck, thereby degrading the sound quality of the electric guitar.
On the basis of this knowledge, the inventor of the present invention proposes to eliminate the end junction between the neck and the body in the construction of the electric guitar.